Small scale food producers and consumers, including peasants, indigenous peoples, hunters and gatherers, family farmers, rural workers, herders and pastoralists, fisherfolk and urban people – the frontline communities – are increasingly confronted by the grabbing of natural resources and systematic violations of human rights. Already pushed to the fringe, these communities additionally face the increasingly frequent natural disasters and impacts of climate destruction that are caused by climate change. The purpose of this report is to amplify the voices of frontline communities and to share the political messages of the 16 social movement leaders with the masses who form the base of social movements all over the world. More than twenty groups from across the globe have contributed to the writing of the report.

There is an avalanche of evidence coming from almost everywhere in the world that agroecology works; this is Africa’s contribution. This compilation of successful stories of agroecology makes a strong statement demonstrating that Africa can feed itself through caring for its environment, using its rich cultural knowledge, and supported by relevant science and technology. The case studies address themes including: food for nutrition and health; increasing incomes, improving livelihoods; regeneration, restoration and biodiversity; valuing local knowledge and innovation; and tackling climate change and building resilience. Next to the case studies, the synthesis-style contributions from Million Belay, Elizabeth Mpofu and Lim Li Ching, to name a few, make a strong connection between local case studies and global impacts.

Based on the video, Together we can cool the planet!, co-produced by La Vía Campesina and GRAIN in 2015, they created a comic book to support training activities of social movements and civil society organisations around climate change. This comic book looks at how the industrial food system impacts our climate and also explains what we can do to change course and start cooling the planet. The refreshing combination of fun graphics with minimal text delivers a clear message: it is peasants and small farmers, along with consumers who choose agroecological products from local markets, who hold the solution to the climate crisis.

This report was prepared to coincide with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food’s second international dialogue. It reviews key literature about how food and agriculture affect climate change and how climate change is affecting food systems. It illustrates how a food systems approach to climate change adaptation and mitigation can drive positive changes and inform decision making to avoid unintended effects from narrowly targeted interventions. This report aims to offer practical steps for immediate action while new research, decision-support tools, governance mechanisms, and their efforts are pursued to support the broader transformation that is urgently needed for sustainable food systems and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Significant uncertainties around future climate change challenge the implementation of policies and programmes. Mobilising action that can respond to climate change and be flexible enough to learn from new experiences as well as adapt to unknowns is difficult, given traditional short-term timeframes, sector silos and the predominantly top-down nature of planning cycles. Process-driven approaches, such as social learning, offer a more flexible approach to tackling climate uncertainties. These approaches place the emphasis on building the capacity, knowledge, evidence and stakeholder relationships necessary to support first shortterm and then longer-term decision making and action.

This book stems from the mounting data that shows how the industrial food system is a major driver of climate change and how food sovereignty is critical to any lasting and just solutions. With governments, particularly those from the main polluting countries, abdicating their responsibility to deal with the problem, it has become ever more critical for people to take action into their own hands. Changing the food system is perhaps the most important and effective place to start. The various articles on climate change selected for this book provide readers with solid information about how the industrial food system causes climate change, how food and agribusiness corporations are getting away with it and what can be done to turn things around. This book aims to help readers to better understand the ways in which corporations seek to increase their control over the food system so that this control can be more effectively challenged.